Wandering Star

by Steven Anderson

  She sighed. “My body wasn’t designed for that.”

  Hannah joined us, sitting down directly across from Alice. “Hannah Weldon,” she introduced herself. “What wasn’t your body designed for?”

  “Alice Vandermeer.” Alice held her hand out which Hannah held briefly, then looked at Alice waiting for an answer. “Oh, we were just talking about how I was going to need strenuous exercise to cope with the increasing gravity. I was hoping Ted could help me.”

  Was that what we had been talking about?

  Hannah started eating, slicing up her sausages and stabbing at them with her fork. “I’d be happy to help too. We can run together if you think you can keep up.”

  “I think you may have a head start. Being from Earth, I mean. It makes you larger.”

  “I’m happy being a little larger.” I saw her eyes dart downward. “And stronger and faster.”

  “But you always have that extra force pulling all of your parts downward. It must be distressing.”

  “Alice,” I interrupted, “have you had a chance to talk to Jake since we came on board?”

  Both Alice and Hannah turned, ready to shift their attacks away from each other and onto me.

  “He’s been staring at his display pad and looking unhappy since I got here,” I continued.

  Alice sighed, unwilling to give up the fight with Hannah but doing so for the sake of a new target. “Yes, I talked to him when I got here this morning. He’s sad about leaving Erin and upset with you for some reason. He said he and Erin are sending a lot of messages back and forth now, but I suspect that will resolve itself with time and distance. By the time we reach Cleavus she will have drifted away. Anyway, Ted, you should go talk to him. What was it that he said your argument was about?”

  “Insanity?” I suggested.

  “Yes, that was it. One of you is insane and one of you is not, I don’t recall which is which. He said that you came this close,” she held her fingers a millimeter apart, “to hitting him in the face.”

  She turned back to Hannah. “Are all of you who are ‘stronger and faster’ also so violent?”

  Hannah pushed her chair back and stood up.

  “Hannah, I believe it’s time for us to get to the lab.” I pushed her toward the exit.

  “Yes, we are, when there’s a need for it,” Hannah called to Alice over her shoulder as we left.

  Once out in the passageway I started laughing.

  “That was funny, Ted?”

  “Amazing, really. I have not seen two people escalate a conversation from zero to an almost brawl in less than three minutes since I left home. My sisters used to do that at the dinner table when I was a kid, except they often ended up rolling around on the floor with my dad yelling at them to break it up.”

  Hannah smiled ruefully. “That’s what I was going to do next.”

  “I’m sorry, I was hoping that you and Alice would become friends. She’s not a bad person.”

  “She wants you, Ted, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you’re too nice to shove her big nose out of your cabin, I will.” Hannah took another couple of steps and said under her breath, “I should have told her that, she does have a big nose.”

  I was still chuckling when we entered the main lab.

  Sipa Patel was there as well as Charlotte, Peter and Giz. Others came and went, working on reports or getting ready for Cleavus. Hannah and Sipa sat at one of the work tables with its larger screen area and started going over the input from Mr. Mahajan. I found a cubicle where I could glance up at her from time to time and worked with Star to dig into the old archives, trying again to find the original three hundred year old Cleavus survey.

  Not long after lunch I found a cache of misfiled seismic and mineralogy reports that gave me enough data to try a simple simulation. I stopped by to see how Hannah and Sipa were coming along and to let her know I’d be in the sim lab. She nodded and barely looked up, intent on following the evolution of some obscure verb usage over the past twenty years.

  The anonymous long dead geologist who had performed the survey, or at least consolidated the data, had mapped the instability of Cleavus’ orbit and used it to explain the alternating layers of limestone and evaporates that covered much of its surface. He had postulated that even though there was no surface water on the planet when the survey was made, that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of layers showing that Cleavus had just as often been entirely covered in water. I played with the sim all afternoon trying to create a model that produced results consistent with the survey. I was getting close by the time Hannah came to fetch me for dinner.

  “I need a couple more hours,” I complained.

  “Nope. I’m hungry now.”

  We ate dinner with Charlotte and Peter, which was good because I needed Peter’s expertise in astrophysics to help refine my orbit model. While we chatted and ate Hannah and I kept having trouble with our feet. It seemed anytime one of us moved we were bumping into each other. It caused Charlotte to have an ‘aren’t-they-cute’ smile on her face until Peter did something under the table that seemed to shock and please her.

  Hannah and I excused ourselves after dinner and I went back to the lab for an hour before happening to walk past her door at about 1900.

  She let me in and said, “Let me show you the progress Sipa and I made on the charts you helped with yesterday.” She brought up Sleeping Star and started the timer.

  “I know you said ‘no talking’, but are you OK?” I asked. “You seemed distracted at dinner.”

  “That’s fine, I need to talk.” She sat on the edge of her bed, looking troubled. “I didn’t get anything done after you left to work on your sim. Sipa did, but I just sat there unable to concentrate. I’d look up and you weren’t there and then all that I could think about was that you weren’t there. I knew you were just across the lab, but I couldn’t see you.” She scooted back on the bed putting her head on the pillows. “There’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. Do you think I’m thinking straight when you aren’t around? This is part of being in love with each other and knowing we can’t show it.” I took her shoes off and started rubbing her feet. “We’re on board the ship together, I can’t be more than a few hundred meters away without Captain von Muller having to give a two hour speech about how ‘horrible is death in the vacuum of space’.”

  I got her to smile. “I don’t want to be like Charlotte and Peter,” she said. “They go through their lives and no one knows they’re in love, no one can know. I want people to be able to see it in my eyes. When I walk down the street I want them to point me out to their friends and say, ‘That girl there, she’s in love. What a lucky guy he must be’. ”

  I moved from her feet to massaging her legs. “I do see it in your eyes, and I am lucky.” I undid her pants, pulled them off and kissed each of her knees. “Our problem is that I think everyone else on board can see it in your eyes too. And in mine.”

  “Less talking, more grunting.” She reached down and pulled me up on top of her. Ten minutes later Wandering Star initiated our first safety drill.

  “I hate you, Star,” Hannah whispered as tears slipped from her eyes.

  “Do you have an extra pressure suit?” I asked.

  “In the closet. It should fit you, it fit—” She stopped.

  “It’s OK. It fit Jake?”

  “Yes. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t. I know it’s me you love.”

  She gave me a quick kiss, her eyes sparkling.

  Hannah shut down Sleeping Star and we waited a second to make sure Star was tracking us again. Then we suited up and ran down the passageway together to spend the rest of the evening being inspired by our Captain.

  The next day, I stayed in the main lab while Hannah and Sipa worked. She looked tired but otherwise OK and s
eemed happy with the day’s results when we talked during dinner. I was at her door at 1930 as we had arranged. After I entered, Hannah hesitated a moment before engaging her Sleeping Star program, wincing as she tapped the icon.

  “I’ve never done this three days in a row,” she explained. “We can’t keep this up.”

  “You never did this with…”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t need to be with any of them like I need to be with you.”

  “We can skip a day if you want.”

  She shook her head again and sat down in the middle of her bed, legs crossed. “Ted, how would you describe me? Just my personality,” she added when she saw my smile.

  “OK. Confident, aggressive, intelligent, creative, playful, independent, determined, innovative and brilliant. What else should I add?”

  She nodded. “That’s how I saw myself. I was in control, I set the agenda and I didn’t need or care about anyone else’s opinion. Independent? Not anymore. Now I can’t work unless I have you within my line of sight.” She flopped back with her head on her pillows. “Damn it, Ted, what have you done to me? I feel like I’m drowning and can’t catch my breath. If I could have you here for one full night I think I could go two or three without you. Or if I could hold your hand during the day, give you a quick kiss or a hug when I wanted to, I think I’d be able to sleep at night.” She put her arms behind her, holding onto the headboard. “The waters are closing over me. I’m not sleeping at night which makes me ineffective during the day which makes me worry all night instead of sleeping.”

  I laid down next to her and she climbed on top of me, trying to press as much of her to as much of me as possible. She nuzzled her head into my shoulder and I shivered as I felt sharp teeth nipping at my ear. Then it stopped. I gently lifted her hair away from my eyes and looked at Hannah, sound asleep on my shoulder. I pulled the covers over us and listened to her breathing, letting it tickle my neck, feeling her body press against me once in a while as she dreamed. With five minutes left on the timer I slid out from under her and kissed her forehead.

  “I need to leave you now.”

  She didn’t open her eyes but said, “It’s OK, my love. Dreaming about you.”

  I returned to my quarters hoping that Hannah would sleep through the night. I know I didn’t. Hannah and I had only slept together for a bit over a week on Dulcinea, yet somehow my body and mind had accepted it as not just normal, but required.

  Things did not improve as the days went by. I only slept for a few hours a night, I think Hannah only slept for the hour we were together. And we were continuing to punch holes through Wandering Star’s brain every night, something she was bound to notice sooner or later.

  Ten days after leaving Dulcinea Alice stopped me in the corridor when I was returning from Hannah’s quarters.

  “Can you meet me for an early breakfast tomorrow? Just you?”

  “Sure, Alice, what time?”

  “Is five too early?”

  “No, I’ll be awake anyway.”

  I was there before her, drinking a cup of coffee and rereading survey reports from Cleavus. Alice poured herself a cup and joined me.

  “You look terrible, Ted.”

  “Thanks, good morning to you too.”

  “I’m serious. You and Hannah both.” She looked around the empty mess hall. “There’s no place to speak privately, is there?”

  I shook my head. “Thereby hangs a tale.”

  “I will just talk then. There is a saying on Dulcinea that your destiny is determined by who you invite into your bed.” She smiled. “It’s usually phrased more crudely. When I first heard it I thought it was just a witticism, I’ve come to believe there is much truth in it.”

  “Your point?”

  “Watching the two of you together is like looking at two magnets forced apart, that now so desperately want to go *clack* back together.”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Let me try it this way.” She held up a small pitcher that was on the table. “You, milk. Hannah, coffee.” She poured some of the milk into her coffee, stirring it until it was a uniform light brown. “See? Can the two be separated?” Her eyes held mine. “Don’t deny what is obvious to every single one of your teammates.”

  “On board this ship we are just friends.”

  Alice looked at the ceiling again, frowning, struggling to stay within the limits.

  “I have heard that sometimes people who are in love suffer when they are forced apart. If they accept that being in love is all about being out of control, they can survive. They will be in pain, sure, but they’ll be OK in the end. But if they have never experienced love before, for example if their previous lovers were all like, let’s say Jake, and she was always in control from the beginning, and she released them when she’s done with them, then she has a decision to make. Does she wants to have control or does she wants to be in love? No one can have both.”

  “An interesting theory.”

  “Yes it is, although I don’t want to collect the empirical evidence to prove it.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t think any of this helps me.” I looked at her and put my head on my hand because I was too tired to hold it up. “Anything else?”

  “Did you know I was married before?”

  I lifted my head back up. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I was very young, only…” I could see her doing the conversion between Earth and Dulcinean years in her head. “Barely nineteen. We were married for seven years.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was an aircraft accident. They’re rare, but they do happen. Two years ago he got out of my bed, kissed me,” she touched her cheek as though she could still feel it, “and he was gone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It kind of proves the wisdom of the saying, doesn’t it? No longer having him in my bed forced me to face several truths about myself. It’s why I am the way I am.”

  “Alice, I suspect you’ve always been the way you are. You are one of the few constants in my life.”

  She smiled. “I like you, Ted. You always tell me the truth once you are tired enough or I get you drunk enough, but you didn’t know me back then. One last thing. My father asked me to offer both you and Hannah a position at the University should you have an interest in returning there some day.”

  “Thank you, Alice, it’s a generous offer.” I looked at my watch and stood up. “I’m going to go work in the sim lab for a while.”

  “You don’t want Hannah to see you talking to me.”

  I pointed at her as I walked out the door. “Truth.”

  That night in Hannah’s cabin I talked to her about our options before I let her sleep.

  “We can’t go on like this, Hannah. We will both literally die.”

  She blinked at me, saying nothing.

  “We’re only a few days from Cleavus. Assuming the full sixty days there then eight days to Bodens Gate that would mean that we could break our contracts in less than three months.”

  “And be stranded on Bodens Gate? Do you know what it’s like there? They use every language ever used on Earth and they’ve been inventing new ones constantly for the past three hundred years. It’s total chaos. People die on Bodens Gate. They die a lot.”

  “I talked to Sipa, he’s from there and he could help us find work. We could save enough for passage to Earth, or back to Dulcinea which would be cheaper. We could probably save enough for that within eight or ten months, get there, work at the University. The point is we would be together, not rich but with no one watching, no timers running. We could just… live. Or a few more weeks past Bodens Gate to Malapert, or we’re six months away from Earth if we can hold on that long.”

  “So this is what you have done to me. I can have three months of misery, and then give up everything I’ve worked
for to live in poverty on the most dangerous planet in the Union, or I can become Charlotte and live a lie every day pretending I don’t love you, or I can just die like I’m doing now.”

  “During your time on Dulcinea did you ever hear the saying that your destiny is determined by who you invite into your bed?”

  She smiled weakly. “What a polite way of saying it.”

  “I have been in your bed and I don’t want to leave. Now we have to choose our destiny.”

  “Will you carry me to my bed, please?”

  I picked her up out of the chair, set her on the bed and I laid down next to her. She curled up on top of me.

  “It’s been a beautiful dream, Ted. All of it from the very beginning has been a beautiful dream.”

  I held her and she slept until it was time for me to leave.

  The next evening Alice came and sat with us as we were finishing dinner. Hannah glanced up at her and sighed, too tired to fight. She went back to cutting up the last of her food.

  “Peter and Charlotte have done something this afternoon. I don’t know what the consequences will be, but you need to know about it.” Alice was shaking, like she had on the Margo Islands when her fears were overcoming her.

  “Where you involved?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes, I was there, but Hannah, I didn’t do this. I would have advised against it.”

  “Just tell us.”

  Alice looked troubled, unsure how to begin. “Peter and Charlotte created a petition to exempt the two of you from the Romantic Entanglements clause in your contract for the duration of the mission. Everyone signed it, including Jake, including me.” She trailed off into a whisper. “Even Captain von Muller signed it. Charlotte asked me to come with her and Peter when they presented it to Angela. They gave it to her and she frowned as she read it and she must have read it three or four times. It looked like she was studying the names at the bottom. Then she looked up and said, ‘No. Will there be anything else?’

  “Peter started to argue with her, but she cut him off saying that it was against the contract everyone had signed and would set a bad precedent. Then Charlotte started to argue and Angela said, ‘So if I approve this how long will it be before you ask for one for you and Peter?’ That pretty much ended the conversation.